A few weeks ago, I stubbed my toe on my old Sun Ultra 5 as it sat there lifeless and unused in my apartment. Once my primary desktop, the envy of my geek friends, and a way to woo the ladies, its glory days have long since passed. As much as I would like to let it live out its days looking sexy and taking up space, I live on the island of Manhattan, where space is a premium. Since I can't charge it rent, I decided I'd better use it or lose it. But what to use it for? What operating system would I run on it? Solaris? What about Linux? FreeBSD? NetBSD? OpenBSD? They all run on the SPARC platform, so I thought why not do a quick review.

I wish I could reminisce about the old Sun Ultra 5's - instead of still being forced to use one for work. I'm entering this now on my work machine, an Ultra 5 with an AMD K6/400 PC card, because management have the misguided view that a machine that can run Solaris and Windows simultaneously increases productivity, despite it being slow as molasses.

I dream of having an Ultra 5 in the corner not doing anything, instead of being on my desk and being the only thing I can use.

I have to say, though, that for a machine that runs 24/7, I have had no trouble with it whatsoever.